'Where in the multiverse...?': researching the vocabulary of science fiction for the OED

The Oxford English Dictionary relies heavily on the work of volunteers to help with its research. We are grateful to the many people who have found important citations, answered questions, looked up hard-to-find references, and made suggestions.

But one problem of traditional approaches — either waiting for useful material to come in, or publicly seeking help with a small number of items (as with the Appeals List that appears in each issue of OED News) — is that they are too limited. Readers send in information that they have no way of knowing has already been superseded, and editors cannot effectively communicate research needs to a wide variety of volunteers.

Several years ago, the North American Editorial Unit began a test project that aimed to correct these problems by looking intensively at the vocabulary of a single subject: science fiction. Backed by a database that was constantly being updated, the project operated over the World Wide Web, delivering the latest status of our research to readers whenever they needed it. The result? Our coverage of science fiction vocabulary is vastly improved, with many terms traced back to extremely early print appearances, important entries brought to the attention of OED editors, and inaccurate definitions corrected. With little duplication of effort, the material we have received has been quickly and easily usable, thanks to the hard work of the project's key volunteers.

The idea was hatched when Sue Surova, a freelance researcher for the OED and a science fiction fan, was asked about the term mutant, referring to a human having a freakish appearance or unusual powers, as a result of a genetic mutation. The OED's first citation was from 1954, but we expected that it had been in use earlier. When Surova sent a message to an online group, she got responses that enabled us to push the term back to 1938. The idea doing this on a wider scale arose rather quickly, and Surova enlisted the volunteer help of computer consultant Mike Christie.

Computer programmer David Griffin volunteered a program that managed the data, based on the open-source database MySQL, and I myself converted a disused desktop computer into a server running FreeBSD, a free version of the Unix operating system; the final system is able to handle varying permissions for any number of users covering any number of subjects. Many science fiction terms, for example, are also terms in science — and in some cases their use in SF predates their use in scientific publications! Two examples are asteroid belt, which our project has brought back to 1931 in the pulp magazine Wonder Stories, and neutronium, dated to 1967 in the Second Edition of the OED, but dated to 1935 in OED3, with a further antedating of 1931 in the editorial pipeline.

The biggest initial effort was getting the OED's science fiction terms into this separate database; the process could not be automated because so many of the entries did not have ‘science fiction’ as a subject label. Surova and Christie performed much of this work, also dividing the terms into three main categories: words found in science fiction writing, words used in criticism of SF (often describing genres or styles), and words used among SF fans.

After some early testing, the project was announced in December 2001 in an online newsgroup devoted to science fiction, and word spread to other sites. Soon we were being deluged with dozens of e-mails a day, containing suggestions, citations, and questions about our work. Mail came from all over the world, and correspondents included several noted SF writers. It took months to fully catch up with the backlog (and the pace has reached more manageable levels). But the results have been spectacular. Some of the entries we have published from the project include Martian, meteor storm, mind-meld (from ‘Star Trek’), moon base, and multiverse, and out-of-sequence entries bot (a robot), filk (a type of song performed by SF fans), and Sturgeon's Law (‘90% of everything is crap’, formulated by writer Theodore Sturgeon).

The SF project, now run by Mike Christie along with Malcolm Farmer and Jeff Prucher, continues to deliver. And what of other possibilities?

Science fiction has several advantages as a subject for this kind of investigation. The vocabulary is largely self-contained; SF terms tend to occur in SF and nowhere else, while, say, political language can be found anywhere and everywhere. The fans are particularly committed, often have linguistic interests, and are computer literate. They may also be more likely to be able to volunteer time than specialists in more academically oriented fields.

Still, there are other areas that could benefit from a similar approach. The hardest part is finding volunteers to lead the effort, who would have to face the awesome task of analysing and responding to dozens or hundreds of e-mails, updating the database, seeking additional help when necessary, tracking down obscure sources, and informing OED editors of the most important discoveries. But seeing the wonderful entries that come out at the end can be the greatest reward of all.

The home page of the OED SF project is at http://www.jessesword.com/SF